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Foreign game at home in Erin
BY DAVID THORPE
If they thought allowing soccer to be played in Croke Park was groundbreaking,
GAA traditionalists should have visited Holly Lane in Birmingham where
the Erin Go Bragh club has broken new ground by combining Gaelic football,
hurling and soccer.
Erin Go Bragh are the current Warwickshire Senior hurling champions and
have been one of the most successful football teams in Birmingham for
many years.
Success has also come the way of the club’s soccer team. The side
is comprised exclusively of the same players who play on the GAA teams
having just secured their seventh promotion in four years to reach Division
One of the ultra-competitive Birmingham and District League.
The team is managed by Aidan McAlinden who took over midway through this
season. He says that the team had no great ambitions when they first fielded
a soccer team.
“We were all playing Gaelic sports and we wanted to keep fit during
the winter so started playing soccer. Most of us had come through the
Erin Go Bragh Club since we were kids and we didn’t really want
to play for any other club so we asked Erin Go Bragh if we could use the
name and facilities. There is a fantastic togetherness in Erin Go Bragh
so they agreed straight away” he said.
Aidan believes that one of the reasons the club have been so successful
as a soccer team is that: “The players have been together for a
long time playing GAA. Lads know each other well and have been through
plenty together. That means that if the team are struggling in a match
they have confidence in each other that they can come back.
“While a lot of other teams at that sort of level have lads who
come and go we have managed to keep roughly the same group of lads together
throughout the years.”
Throughout the townlands and villages of Ireland, the same players have
frequently played on soccer and GAA teams in the area but by combining
all of the Irish people’s favourite sports under one roof Erin Go
Bragh have been genuinely imaginative and as their various teams continue
to be successful, they could become the model followed by GAA clubs on
both sides of the Irish sea.
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